PewDiePie Vs. T-series: Who Will be the King of YouTube?

Recently there has been drama on who will be the next king of YouTube, the currently long-time ruling king (PewDiePie) or the fast and up and coming Indian company (T-series). The reason for this drama is that T-series isn’t its own person, but a company. People think by having T-series as the number one most subscribed youtuber it’ll take away from what YouTube is and what it was meant to be. So how did T-series achieve all these subscribers, and how did PewDiePie eventually lose his crown as the king of YouTube, well your about to find out.

This is a picture of PewDiePie and, the T-series Logo, it’s a side by side comparison. Picture taken from Likecars.info

Felix Kjellberg was born on October 24,1989. Felix started his YouTube channel in 2010 where he quickly gained subscribers and became rapidly popular on the platform. During 2013, PewDiePie was becoming the most subscribed YouTuber, making it in the top 10. At the time, Smosh was the most subscribed channel on the platform.

In August 2013, PewDiePie’s subscriber numbers were getting up to Smosh’s numbers, with them both having the sub count of 11 million. On August 15th, 2013 7:30 PM EST, Felix officially surpassed Smosh’s subscriber count of 11,915,062 with his sub count of 11,915,435.

This is a picture Felix Kjellberg, Aka PewDiePie, this picture was taken in his house. Picture taken from Networthmaster.com

T-series is a Bollywood production company set in India. It quickly gained traction in 2017 with their channel gaining almost 2 million subscribers a month. There are several reasons for T-Series’ remarkable growth, but location plays a big part in it. India is home to more than 1.3 billion people. That’s more than the entire North American continental population.

There are also very few channels in the West creating high-quality Bollywood content. Type “Bollywood” into YouTube’s search bar, and T-Series dominates the list of recommended videos suggested.

This is a picture of the T-series logo, and their profile picture for YouTube. Picture taken from Youtube.com

An article from polygon.com had this to say about the T-series vs. PewDiePie drama, “YouTube has 225 million monthly users in India, with 80 percent of the country’s internet population logging on to YouTube each month. People looking for Bollywood videos, or music videos from their favorite Indian artists, can find everything they’re looking for on T-Series’ channel. It’s not just Indian YouTube users that T-Series serves, but it gives the channel a huge advantage as they serve Bollywood content to audiences around the globe.” Taking all this into consideration it makes sense why T-series is about to surpass PewDiePie subscribers.

This is a picture of PewDiePie, and T-series’ social blade chart on who is gaining more subscribers per month. Picture taken from Polygon.com

So, after all of this how does PewDiePie himself feel about this situation? In a recent question and answer video titled “How long will I keep doing YouTube?” he stated, “I don’t really care about T-series I genuinely don’t, but I think if YouTube does shift in a way where it does feel more corporate something else will take its place.” This raises a question though, if YouTube does become more corporate what will happen to the indie creators? Most people on YouTube don’t want to find out.

How do people in the YouTube community feel about the PewDiePie vs. T-series debate? A freshman at Woodstock High School named Tala Akarr had this to say, “If PewDiePie gets conquered (then) I’m going to stomp down there myself and drink the Ganges River.”

A senior from Woodstock High School named Sage Carino said this, “I’m pretty upset at the fact that T-series might become the number one YouTuber, I’ve always thought of PewDiePie as the top YouTuber, and to seem him fall from grace kind of pains my heart, even though I don’t watch PewDiePie as much as I used to I still respect him as being the top dog in the YouTube community.”

There might be another reason for T-series recent success, in the latest edition of his popular series ‘Pew News’, Kjellberg questioned the legitimacy of T-Series’ subscribers, saying; “On my Reddit, there’s been a lot of posts talking about how if you create an account in India or the Middle East, you will automatically be subscribed to T-Series.” So, to see if this is true Kjellberg asked fans to create a Middle East YouTube account to see if this was really happening.

This is a picture of PewDiePie’s news series that he runs on his channel. He talks about the recent drama that’s goes on. Picture taken from Pewdiepie.wikia.com

If you think about it, it makes sense why T-series is beating Felix Kjellberg in subs. T-series is a massive company pushing out multiple videos a day, while Felix Kjellberg is just one man, he couldn’t possibly compete with a company of this size. However, several users on the Internet believe that there’s no comparison between the two channels. Also, YouTube’s search and recommendation algorithm benefits musical artists more than independent YouTube creators, which probably isn’t the best for Felix Kjellberg or any other indie creator.

So, at the end of the day T-series will probably pass PewDiePie in subscribers, and when that day come us PewDiePie fans will cry in sadness, but he’ll still be the number one YouTuber in my heart ,and the hearts of many